Blue Mass Group

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Even yet still more another endorsement for Bump: Ours

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(by Charley, signed off by David and Bob)

MA Auditor candidate Suzanne Bump has been riding a nice wave of press endorsements this week: The Globe, the TABs, the Phoenix, etc. For what it's worth, she can chalk up another one: The BMG editors.

The position of Auditor requires absolute integrity, judicious aggressiveness (as it were), policy chops, and familiarity with the workings of state government (i.e. “knowing where the bodies are buried”). Given all that, here's what's right about Suzanne Bump for Auditor:

  • On integrity: She risked, and in fact lost, her political career in 1992 over her successful attempt to reform worker's compensation. The system is now ranked the best in the country.
  • She's been a modernizer and reformer in the job of Sec. of Labor and Workforce Development.
  • Her focus on the state's economic development tax breaks shows an appropriate skepticism and independence from the political establishment.
  • She also intends to continue to focus on the state's Medicaid spending, looking at irregularities to root out waste, fraud and abuse. Well, that's where the money is, to be sure.
  • She speaks easily, pertinently and fluently about the role of the office of the Auditor.

… and so forth. yellowdogdem wrote a very fine post in support of her here.

Read more at her website here — it's good and informative.

Bump's not perfect. She was fined $600 back in 1992 for accepting theater tickets from a lobbyist. She's been a lobbyist for banks. Eh.

Look, I've been at two of the meetings between Suzanne Bump and Mike Lake. (Guy Glodis blew off both of them; I'll get to him later.) I'll just say that this is not a hard decision, choosing between Bump and Lake.

Lake seems like a very nice guy, smart enough and ambitious. He undoubtedly works hard. He had five (count 'em) FIVE majors in college. He worked at the White House! He's chipper!

But his plans for running the office strike me as rather shallow: Energy audits are fine … but then what? And he lards his remarks with strident but rather hollow populism: “People are hurting in Massachusetts”, that kind of thing. Look, I think that a common touch and compassion are great, but Auditor ought to be a straight-down-the-middle, Joe-Friday, sober kind of job. So Lake's wrong on campaign tone for this position (demonstrated in yesterday's forum, by the way); and I strongly suspect it disguises a lack of depth on the nuts-and-bolts. (Prime example here it's not a plan; it's bluster.)

Glodis … is there anything good to say about this Guy? He sent out a stone-cold racist email to the whole State Senate in 2002. He can't keep his campaign finances straight. He's paid for graduation gifts and dinners from his campaign funds. (I didn't say it; he did!) He seemingly (allegedly allegedly) laundered a $20,000 donation from a hedge fund pal (who later went to prison, but that's not Guy's fault). As an anti-patronage pol, naturally, he loves patronage. 

And on, and on, and on, (X10).

No more. Glodis is a joke. He must lose.

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      • …I won’t be supporting Glodis in the general…but I’ll keep the inevitable next step in the realm of theory and we’ll see what reality brings us Tuesday night.    

  2. with the video you provide in this excerpt from your endorsement:

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    p>

    So Lake’s wrong on campaign tone for this position (demonstrated in yesterday’s forum, by the way); and I strongly suspect it disguises a lack of depth on the nuts-and-bolts. (Prime example here it’s not a plan; it’s bluster.)

    <

    p>Lake is not wrong on campaign tone.  He tries very hard to explain things thoroughly, yet quickly. It’s the only way you can do thorough and quick in today’s one minute responses in debates and forums. It looks to me that he is pressured to get as much in as he possibly can, as clear as he can.  This would be far more appreciated by the voter than quick pre-written sound bites that vaguely cover a position.

  3. Thanks for the nice reference in your endorsement, but there’s one more piece that people should pay attention to — Dan Payne’s op-ed just posted on Boston.com.  No summary would do this justice, so here it is in full:

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    In the state auditor’s race, the two top Democrats appear on paper to be similar. Both are former state representatives and both have run large public agencies. Suzanne Bump was secretary of labor under Governor Deval Patrick, and Guy Glodis is the sheriff of Worcester County. A third candidate, Michael Lake, runs a fledgling program at Northeastern University that looks to share ideas among city governments around the world.

    Vive la différence. Bump and Glodis are quite different on issues. Glodis lost the Democratic convention nomination in May when he was shown to be on the wrong side of nearly every liberal issue – gay rights, the death penalty, gun control, taxes, and diversity.

    Bump, in the Legislature and as labor secretary, was a reformer and won praise for modernizing and streamlining a state agency that is many times larger than the auditor’s office.

    The shady loan. Ethics is the distinction between them. Glodis has had to defend himself against stories in the Globe that showed that he had illegally taken and hid the source of a $22,000 personal loan originally made by a friend, a hedge fund manager who has since gone to jail for bilking millions from his clients. Just days after getting that loan, Glodis made a $20,000 personal loan to his campaign. He says the two are unrelated. Yeah, sure.

    Sheriff as outlaw. Glodis has a close relationship with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which polices how candidates handle political money. In 2009, the agency ordered Glodis to pay $9,970 in fines for unlawfully depositing 34 money orders worth $5,770 into his campaign account, and for illegally accepting 12 corporate contributions totaling $2,600.

    For depositing $1,400 in campaign checks into his personal account, the agency fined him $1,000. Not learning his lesson, this year he was ordered to repay the sheriff’s office $674.69 for a political mailing printed at taxpayer expense.

    No auditing experience, but has been audited. Outgoing Auditor Joe DeNucci’s office found that Glodis gave out more than $74,000 in no-bid contracts for consultants. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette revealed that 21 of the 29 officers who were promoted in the sheriff’s department had made campaign contributions to Glodis.

    Too boorish for St. Patrick’s breakfast. Glodis was told not to come back by organizers of the annual South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast for his tasteless, boorish jokes. He made fun of Mayor Tom Menino’s appearance and speech and made crude “jokes” about women, homosexuals, and the height of Robert Reich, the former US secretary of labor.

    Glodis tries to tar Bump. For months Bump has posted on her campaign website that when she was a state representative two decades ago, she let an insurance lobbyist buy her dinner and give her theater tickets, for which she agreed to pay a $600 fine. But Glodis is now trying to create moral equivalence between his many serious violations and Bump’s one-time, minor act of poor judgment.

    Bump outgunned 4-1. Bump got a $100,000 bump in public funds (the state provides money to candidates who agree to abide by spending limits.) She’s running nearly $200,000 in radio ads; plus she’ll get help from Patrick’s political organization – she was his political director four years ago. But the auditor’s primary won’t get much news coverage, so spending on advertising in the final days could be crucial. Glodis has a war chest of nearly $800,000 and a sizable political base in Worcester County. He could just buy the thing.

    Lake diving. The third Democrat, Michael Lake, claims he “ran day-to-day operations” in the Clinton White House while still in college. Who knew? With $58,000 in state funds, he could take just enough reform votes to sink Bump and give Glodis the nomination. A new independent poll shows Bump and Glodis virtually tied and Lake way back. They’re all unknown.

    Glodis forecasts “reign.” The front of a new Glodis mailer has a colossal Freudian slip in the headline. He promises to “reign [sic] in wasteful political spending.” If enough voters blank the primary Tuesday, vote for Lake, or go with a Guy whose name is familiar, we could see a rain of corruption stories.

    • Of all the reasons not to consider voting for Glodis and why Bump is the far better candidate to be the Democratic nominee for the General Election.

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      p>Frankly, while none of the items on the list are new, the compilation in the piece was eye-opening and jaw-dropping. Could see it being turned into a nice 30 – 45 second YouTube piece with paper scrolling and voice overs reminding people of who Glodis is and what he has done.

    • A vote for (Candidate C) is never a vote for (Candidate B).  It’s like saying that not spending a dollar at all is just like spending a dollar on your least favorite candy bar.

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      p>Voting for the person who comes in third (or lower) is functionally equivalent to not voting at all — not to voting for the other candidate who finishes in the top two.

  5. that the race for the Democratic nomination for frickin’ Auditor would be this intense?

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    p>Ah, the unpredictability of politics.

      • The auditor has a lot of discretion to decide which agencies to look into and how closely to look into them.  Take a look at the 2009 Auditor Report.  All those “initiatives” are exercises of the Auditor’s judgment about what to pay attention to.

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        p>So, say, you run the Massachusetts Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth. Would you be glad to learn that Auditor Glodis wants to come over for a visit?  

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        p>    

          • “Glodis.”

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            p>With a good State Auditor, yeah, you’re right. With a hack who has a record of anti-GLBT stances, the glbt-friendly organization may not feel so comfortable being looked at for ‘efficiencies.’  

  6. I think you guys just saved Guy Glodis’s campaign! The Curse!

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    p>Full Disclosure: I don’t support anyone in this race. I just hope that whoever is the nominee will be able to beat Connaughton because I think she’s a great candidate for the Republicans.  

    • Glodid would feel very comfortable at a Tea Party meeting…Mary Z C…she’s jsut a penny pitching CPA…

  7. …or have you not yet administered the “kiss of death” (er… endorsement) to a candidate for Treasurer and Receiver General?

    • That sure is a great Lake, he’s the wrong Guy for the job… etc. etc. etc. This is an amazing State Auditor race for an infusion of creative writing into political blogging…

    • I’m hopeful and optimistic, but that won’t get Bump the votes she needs on Tuesday.  Please contact everyone you know and ask them to vote for Suzanne Bump in the Democratic Primary on Tuesday.

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